Archive for December, 2010

Tron: Legacy ReviewNote: This review has MEGA SPOILERS. If you’ve already seen the movie, or don’t on play on ever seeing Tron Legacy, then read on. However, keep in mind that this review is primarily written for those people who’ve seen it.If you haven’t already seen Tron Legacy, then I suggest for you to go see it. It isn’t the worst movie ever made, It is nice looking, I will give it that.

Needless to say, I’m quite fond of the original Tron.

That said…NURD RAGE AT MAXXIMUM!
If you want the short version of my review, just reference the picture below.
The geniuses at Penny Arcade also summed up some of the problems with Tron: Legacy as well:

Also, I’m going to re use an actual headline from a review from Tron to also get my point across.

It is also best if you have already seen the original Tron as well, as it is referenced a lot in this review.
After all, who hasn’t seen the original?

Everyone that I’ve talked to has told me that it really doesn’t matter about the story of Tron: Legacy; that people aren’t going to see Tron 2 for the story.

After all, people go see utter crap like “Transformers,” which literally had NO story, and made it a huge hit. And look, I concur fully that the original didn’t have the best story in the world either.

But, what the original had a lot of was SOUL.

The original was created by an animator (Lisberger) and a group of the most talented artists working at the time. In my opinion, Tron was the pinnacle of special effects and animation and computer animation at the time. Not even Industrial Light and Magic could have topped what Lisberger and his crew accomplished with the original Tron.

This Tron sequel was created by an Architect (Kosinski) and five terrible writers.

It’s as another reviewer stated, “it’s like this new Tron movie was created by the MCP.”

The director, Joseph Kosinski, or “Jo-Ko” as I call him, has directing OBJECTS down pat. He would make a great VFX/SFX director. He makes a terrible director because he doesn’t know what do with people; e.g. things that can talk and elicit emotion. Here’s a picture of Jo-Ko eliciting emotion.

Jo-Ko has also been tapped to helm the next Film Failure, the remake of “The Black Hole.”

It should turn out GREAT!

Visually, Tron: Legacy is visually stunning in some areas.

But, if you step back for a second, it really isn’t.

Wait, how can I say that? The movie looked spectacular!!!!!

Yes, it was visually fantastic on one hand. But, if you step back for a second, we’re now a stone’s throw away from the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven.

That’s twenty nine years since the original.

What did we get new visually in twenty nine years?

Not much.

We got an amped up, hyper version of the disc battles and light cycle battles…Oh and we got a Solar “Nazi Death Camp” metaphor- Sailer.

Oh, and the “End of Line” club (ha, ha, look they referenced the original movie)

THAT’S IT.

Sure, everything looks nice, but it is at the same time, visually sterile. Primarily because the “Grid” world that Flynn created makes little sense, and everything and everyone looks exactly the same.

On the grid we have the gladiator area, the end of line bar, a city of sorts, and then a VAST outlander netherworld. Oh, and the grid inhabitants are either white/whitish blue, or orange.

White=Good. Orange=Bad.

In the original Tron, Red=Bad, and Blue=Good. But they also had other programs that had different colors.

In the original Tron, the MCP had captured programs from other systems and forced them to play games. This was for the amusement of the MCP and his crony Sark. There were no observers, or cheering crowd.

In Tron: Legacy, where did all of the programs that inhabit the server come from? Remember, the server has been sealed off from the rest of the entire world for over twenty years.

That means that there were a finite number of programs in the Encom server with no way to replenish them. So, logically, if CLU 2 had continuously run gladiator games on the grid, even at a leisurely rate, he would have long since run out of programs.

Furthermore, what exactly are the white programs doing as their day to day job?

Given what little I knew about the plot, I had hoped that Flynn was in some epic battle with CLU 2.

Sadly, this was not the case.

Instead of an epic battle with whole sections of the grid taken over by CLU 2 and Flynn with fantastic battles between creator and creation we’re treated to…

FLYNN BEING A PUSSY AND HIDING OUT IN A CAVE FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS.

Okay, let’s go onto the problems:

One I/O tower in Tron: Legacy= FAIL.

In the original Tron, there were many Input/Output towers so that the programs could communicate with their users. When the MCP came to town he shut most of them down. Although it’s not directly stated, Flynn could have possibly got out of the digital world via an I/O tower. In the end he took the express train out of the digital world by jumping into the MCP’s beam.

With Flynn working apparently by himself, IN SECRET, one would think that he would have made ABSOLUTELY SURE that he had a FAILSAFE way of exiting the digital realm.

Instead, the writers made an absurd situation where the main I/O tower only had a “limited amount of energy,” and would then close forever, like a safe with the only way to open the connection was FROM THE OUTSIDE.

This brings us to part B of this “safe” problem.

Paging Mr. Herman

The Magical Pager.

If the grid was totally cut off from the outside world and in lock down mode, how did ANYONE send a page to Alan Bradley?

Now, a lot of people have stated that it was CLU who sent the page, and this is incorrect. Kevin Flynn tells Sam that “It was CLU. He sent you (Sam) that page, so he could get another chess piece on the board.”

Ahhh, but NOBODY sent a page to SAM FLYNN. They paged ALAN BRADLEY.

So, let’s go through the suspects:

CLU 2. Clu -might- have known Tron’s user’s name, but even if you assume that when CLU “appropriated” and changed Tron to Rinsler, and CLU 2 absorbed all of Tron’s memory, it’s hard to believe that Tron just so happened to have Alan Bradley’s pager number. Then there’s the problem of how did Clu send the message? Furthermore, why did CLU 2 wait for so long?

It is apparent that Flynn was defeated and went into hiding (most likely) twenty years prior, after “the great purge,” so why would CLU 2 all of a sudden think to send a page, of all things, to Alan Bradley. After all, why wouldn’t CLU 2 just call Bradley? Bradley would have thought that he was talking to Flynn, not a computer program.

The shitty thing is that apparently Flynn kept his whole digital frontier, change the world-thing from Alan and Lora.

Quorra: When Quorra busts into the light cycle game and rescues Sam, she knows exactly who he is despite the fact that his name is NOT mentioned to the crowd. Sam is only referred to as “A USER.” Quorra tells Sam, “Patience, Sam Flynn, all of your questions will be answered soon.” How does she know who Sam is?

Later, Flynn tells Quorra, “Thanks for bringing my son back to me,” which could mean him thanking her for rescuing him from the game grid.

It is unlikely that Quorra sent the page, after all she has almost NO IDEA about what it’s like in the outside world, let alone the other computer systems. AND, Flynn’s computer wasn’t connected to any intranet, or internet, so it’s not like she hacked something and then went on the internet to find out Alan Bradley’s long lost pager number. Besides, how would she even know what a pager is?

This pager problem is another “Lost-ism” where it’s a cool idea that simply wasn’t thought through, mainly because the writers on Lost got used to tossing out cool, or incredible ideas every episode, but never actually following up on the cool ideas in later episodes.

It would have been much more plausible for the I/O tower to be ALWAYS ON, but in order for Clu2 to try and leave, he would need Flynn’s disc in order to try and escape. They could have had Clu2 build an EMPIRE around the I/O tower and have “scrubbing” programs that scoured the wasteland looking for Flynn’s hideout. Or any other variations that would have at least created a CONFLICT.

It would have been cooler if Flynn had created a program, or routine (like a Grid bug, or something to that effect) that had been designed to send a message to Alan Bradley through the portal I/O tower. However, the catch would be that the program/routine took YEARS studying Clu2’s defenses of the portal and finally figured out a way to get to the portal and send the message that Flynn had long since forgotten about. It would have been a cool way to open the movie. However, this would mean that the nonsense of the “time lock” portal plot would have to have been rewritten.

Also, HOW DID SAM PAGE ALAN BRADLEY AT THE END OF THE MOVIE? Well, I guess the real question is how did Sam know Alan Bradley’s pager number that Kevin Flynn gave him twenty plus years previous, that (apparently) was only used between Flynn and Bradley?

This leads me to another INCREDIBLY HUGE FLAW in Tron: Legacy.

CLU 2 captures Sam the instant he appears on the grid. Sam proudly announces to CLU 2, “I’m no program my name is Sam Flynn!!!” CLU 2 then takes Sam’s identity disc, scans it totally, and then give is to Tron. WTF?

Wouldn’t that be “Game Over,” right then and there? After all, if Sam figured out a way in, why did CLU 2 need Kevin Flynn any more? The writers put in some bullshit stating that CLU 2 needed the Kevin Flynn’s disc in order to unlock the way out, but that’s just a cop out.

CLU 2 had his way out in Sam Flynn.

At the very minimum, it would have been much more intelligent to HOLD SAM HOSTAGE and not send him to certain death in a light cycle game.

Oh, I think I’m the only person to notice that Sam’s disc magically reappears on his back at the start of the light cycle scene.

Why would they give him back his identity disc if they were about to (almost certainly) kill him?

DIGITAL GREEN BEANS

Kosinski and the writers should be chastised for putting in that ridiculous dinner scene where the movie comes to an awkward DEAD STOP.

In the original Tron, they programs just drank pure ENERGY, which made sense. They didn’t eat digital apples, or digital pizza.

In Legacy, Flynn somehow creates a full meal, including digital green beans and a stuffed pig. WTF, ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?

If Flynn can create as something as complex as a pork meal, why can’t he BUILD TANKS? Sigh…

Another thing that pisses me off, is that the director and the production designer TOTALLY RIPPED OFF this scene from “2001.”

In a recent interview, the production designer said this about the near total duplication of the set from “2001.”

“These recognizable design elements are inspired by Flynn’s distant memories of the real world, Gilford said. “Because Flynn is originally human, and he has the ability to create his own exiled environment, we chose these familiar furnishings to showcase his personal aesthetic.” Look closely, he added, and you’ll notice that these classic elements have been “tweaked into the ‘Tron’ design language.”

In that whole interview there was not even one fucking NOD to Kubrick and 2001, by the interviewer, or the production designer for Legacy. It’s like Flynn said in the original, “The slime didn’t even change the names, man.”

NO CINDY MORGAN

Sure, obviously Cindy Morgan’s character Yori wasn’t going to be coming back for Tron: Legacy, but they could have at least found SOMETHING for her to do.

When I found out that the producers hadn’t even considered having Cindy Morgan in the new film I knew something was rotten in Denmark.
She’s still a Looker at 42*

*Tron age 🙂

At first you might think, “Well, big fucking deal! Who cares about that chick from Caddyshack anyway? It’s not like she had any real importance in the original Tron!” Well, she ONLY CREATED THE WAY TO TELEPORT SOLID MATTER; the same method and LASER that Flynn uses in Legacy to enter the digital world. I’d say she’s a hell of a lot more important than even Alan Bradley.

This brings up an important item that is largely forgotten at the end of the original movie. THAT THEY COULD TELEPORT SOLID MATTER. Sure, Flynn destroyed the MCP and saved the system, and got the data clearing his name, and Ed Dillinger’s job. But the fact that Flynn had proven that a human could be teleported into the digital world and back was not covered.

It is only assumed that Flynn TOLD NO ONE about his fantastic voyage, as apparently nobody knows about it in Legacy, not even Alan Bradley and especially not Lora.

You would think that with the MCP vanquished, and Dillinger gone, that Flynn would have concentrated on the digitizer laser project as the company’s sole focus.

Apparently Flynn must have fired Lora, and shut down the digitizer department and stole everything to set up his “Tron Cave.”

Otherwise, the research would have continued and somebody would have figured out about the whole “suck you into the computer world” thing.

So, Lora should have had a VERY important role in the Tron: Legacy movie. The writers just totally suck balls. Which leads me to:

ADAM HOROWITZ IS THE WORST AND MOST UNIMAGINATIVE WRITER OF ALL TIME.*
*IMHO. Horowitz was one of the head writers of “Lost” and “Felicity” and “Fantasy Island: The next generation.”
Being one of the lead writers for “Lost” I’m certain put him as the lead writer in this project.

When Tron: Legacy concluded, I came to the conclusion that it could only have been Horowitz that came up with the whole “computer program somehow magically transformed into a human being” idea at the end of the movie. This was sappily done in order to bring Quorra into the real world so that she could “see the sun and feel it’s warmth.”

Even though Tron had four other writers besides Horowitz, It was like I was having my own, “I knew it was you, Fredo” moment the second Quorra appeared in the real world at the end of the movie.

If you want to read why Adam H. is the worst writer of all time, I’ll direct you to this interview and let him explain how much he sucks in his own words.

Flynn Jr. was an actual human being. So when he was digitized it was simply` H.I.H.O. (Human in. Human out.) When it came time to bring Sam back into the real world, he was re-assembled by the digitizing laser and made a human according to the PATTERN IT SCANNED AND DIGITIZED. Quorra was a computer program. She wasn’t flesh and blood.

So, in theory, when Quorra was being re-energized into the real world by Flynn’s laser, she should have just evaporated into a matrix of energy of ones and zeros, OR into some sort of energy being; A NEW FORM OF LIFE perhaps!

I could have dealt with that. In fact, that might have been actually cool; after all she WAS a new form of life in the digital world, an ISO. That would have actually been COOL.

And YES, I fully understand the allusion to “Star Trek’s” replicators. I guess the writers thought, “HEY! If they can teleport an orange in Tron, then why couldn’t they just MAKE endless oranges?!”

Making her just a regular human with ISO Tattoo was just totally absurd and MADE NO SENSE. Yes, I realize that it is fantasy, but that ending is a farking typical “Lost” ending; totally fucking absurd and a big finger to the intelligence of the audience. It’s almost as if the writers were like, “Fuck the audience, they’re not going to understand anything anyway.”

If they had established that Quorra bled like a user or something to that effect, it would have been at least somewhat, plausible. Yes, they alluded that the ISOs had “DNA,” but that doesn’t = VAGINA, BOOBS, and needing to breath AIR to live. Is Sam really going to bone Quorra? Is he sure that she even HAS a vagina. After all, why would she? SHES A COMPUTER PROGRAM, why would it procreate at all?

Quorra “evolved” in the digital realm, so how would she live in the real world except as a form of energy? Her “DNA” is from an entirely different world.

Next Point:

WTF was Clu going to do with his rip off Sark’s Flying Carrier of doom?

How exactly was Clu’s command ship going to be “re-energized” by one man-sized laser inside a cramped room?

Wouldn’t have everything pretty much derezzed/exploded by crashing into/through Flynn’s arcade and the surrounding buildings the instant it was materialized.

That is if you could get around the plausibility of a man-sized laser being able to digitally recreate something the size of Darth Vader’s ship, The Executor.

THE FASTEST THING ON THE GRID
Here we have the biggest fucking tease in the entire movie.
Flynn’s “Legacy” light cycle that’s faster than anything on the grid.

As a writer, when this little plot device was introduced, I immediately thought of all of the cool things that Sam could have done with it.

He could have gotten in a chase/battle in the streets of the grid, and had the edge because his light cycle could do the 90 degree turns.

He could have raced some of CLU’s minions and totally pwned them.

Something like what was shown in the awesome Tron: Evolution GAME trailer
He could have done some insane awesome tricks, like in the trailer for the game above, but instead…

HE SNEAKS INTO THE CITY AND THEN GIVES THE BIKE AWAY TO A DIGITAL HOBO.

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!!

Also, another plot hole is HOW DID SAM GET TO THE GRID? Remember the whole reason Quorra drove an ATV was because THE LIGHT CYCLES COULD NOT TRAVERSE THE TERRAIN.

Then we have the biggest problem with the entire film.

Kevin Flynn.

Let’s back up for a second and remember that in the first Tron, Flynn was able to repair a totally destroyed recognizer and fly away.

He also punched the shit out of a guard and then sucked the life out him.

He also saved Yori when she was dying.

Flynn also diverted a beam of pure energy in order to escape on the Solar Sailer.

Also, at the end of Tron, Flynn was able to jump into the MCP beam and change things/distract the MCP just long enough for Tron to deliver the killing blow.

So, what does Flynn do in Tron: Legacy? JACK AND SHIT

Keep in mind that Flynn did this with his user powers inside an extremely hostile system that was totally controlled by the MCP.

It was a cool idea; Flynn was a user and could do things and fix things that nobody else could, but he didn’t have totally crazy god-like powers. After all this was the MCP’s world.

In Tron: Legacy, “The Grid,” was created entirely by Flynn; it was his world.

So, logic has it that he should have had ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL CONTROL over the world.

If Flynn could rip off Kubrick and create a “2001”ish cave hideout, why couldn’t he build a TANK PROGRAM and go BLOW UP CLU2 with thousands of tanks?

*”I shouldn’t have created all of those tank programs” is a quote from Flynn from the original Tron.

Ya see, this is what I thought that the movie was going to be about. A vast Artificial Intelligence (CLU 2) creates his army, and Flynn creates his army and then the two would battle it out in a vast, and amazing artificial world.

Both CLU 2 and Flynn could have come up with some PRETTY COOL SHIT to battle each other with.

There could have been fights with flowing energy, digital dragons, super tanks, actual digital creatures, some sort of digital ghosts, It could have been amazing.

But, those cool ideas didn’t happen because every last one of the writers are talentless douchebags. (in my opinion). They couldn’t even come up with ONE NEW GRID GAME.

At the end of the movie Flynn shows that he indeed had control over CLU 2 and the entire grid the entire time, because he rips CLU 2 apart bit by bit, and then BLOWS UP AND DESTROYS THE ENTIRE GRID for no reason, just as Sam escapes with Quorra. I guess this was the “reintegration” that Quorra was talking about, which was another idiotic part of the story.

I can surmise that Flynn isn’t actually dead, but now will become an “Obi Wan” like character, communicating from the dead; from inside (a/the) computer world. **Assuming that there’s going to be a Tron 3, which is unlikely now that the movie only did $43 million on opening weekend.

Lastly, we have one of the biggest problems in the movie. If CLU 2 had flyers, jets, jetpacks, TANKS etc, you would think that he and his minions would stop at nothing to find Flynn in the wasteland, right? What else does he have to do?

What about the woefully underused Recognizers?

In the first Tron, those fuckers were ON THE BALL and were ALL OVER THE PLACE.

In Legacy, they appear to be largely forgotten, as were the tanks.

Well, the recognizers really wouldn’t have to look very far, or hard, as FLYNN’S CAVE WAS LIKE A BRIGHT STAR BUILT INTO THE SIDE OF FUCKING MOUNTAIN.

I mean, come on, what was the purpose of having CLU 2 have this massive army and police state if Quorra can just sneak in with her “HEY, I’M RIGHT OVER HERE!!!” ATV, and Sam can just drive on in with Flynn’s very recognizable light cycle?

Here’s CLU looking back at the grid, thinking: “I can’t believe how stupid I was. Flynn was like, ten miles away from the grid the whole time. I can see my fucking apartment from here!”
Moving on.

RIPPING OFF STAR WARS, AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY

Flynn was pretty much a totally pussed out Obi-Wan Kenobi throughout the entire movie. Instead of just being able to do almost anything (A la the force), like stop an elevator from falling, he actually has to HACK the elevator. LAME X 1,000,000.

Just think in Star Wars if Obi-Wan was like, “hold on, I COULD use the force to open those doors, but instead I’m going to hack the door instead because I’m “leet” like that.”

There was also the rip off of the “Star Wars” turret scene at the end of the movie.

Flynn was able to fix Quorra, and had to hack her to fix her because she was a more advanced form of digital life, and that’s fine. I can understand that.

But, everyone else? Meat for the digital meat grinder.

Next up:

LACK OF CLARITY IN THE BATTLE SCENES

After my second viewing of Tron: Legacy, I noticed the really shitty fight scenes. I’m talking hand to hand with the discs, which was just stupid to being with. A GREAT example of the poor choreography of the fight scenes is during the “End of Line” club fight scene. Look how poorly staged that fight is, and how crappy the editing was.

For some unknown reason, the director thought it would be perfect to insert a single shot of a female program holding the “bits/remains” of one of her friends, and doing a WHYYYYYY!!! moment, right in the middle of a very fast paced fight.

There’s also a BIG problem in that same scene when the “Ninja” program steals Flynn’s disc and then throws an explosive charge onto the elevator door. If you watch it closely, when they show the wide shot, THE WHOLE FUCKING FLOOR IS BLOWN UP. They cut back, and magically the bar and “Ninja” is unharmed.

In the original Tron there were the great disc battles to enjoy.

Here’s the original disc battle. Four on one.

Very cool and easy to follow. Yet, I do understand that today’s audiences NEED more, better, faster, stronger! (to quote Daft Punk). Unfortunately, since the director decided to have everyone use a UNIFORM color palette across the board, the result is that it is very difficult to follow exactly what the hell is going on.

I guess nobody thought that two programs fighting in a glass box with discs flying and bouncing all over the place (in three dimensions…literally) would be too difficult to follow.

Furthermore, the designers decided to give all of the contestants not only the same color, they gave them almost virtually identical patterns. It’s very difficult to figure out who’s who, and it totally takes away from anything cool in the disc battles in Tron: Legacy.

They should have had the final fight be between Rinzler/Tron and four opponents (including Sam.) The four programs could have ganged on on Rinzler/Tron and he could have showed off more; like parrying two discs at once from two different angles.

But, they didn’t…

In Fact, it seems that the preferred mode of combat is hand to hand and not via actually throwing the discs anymore. THIS REALLY SUCKED.

They should have at least had some sort of COOL STUFF. Energy fields, power ups, SOMETHING.But, alas, once again, we go back to the lack of imagination by the Tron director and writers.Also, I really don’t like the new identity discs. I really don’t understand how exactly they are wielded as apparent SAWBLADES without damaging their wielders.
Oh, and yes, the derezzing is cool. I liked that.
But, the original derezzing was just as cool.

Still, Legacy didn’t have one disc battle as good as the original and didn’t have anything as cool as this:

The LIGHT CYCLE DUEL

I did like the new light cycles, and I really liked the way how they made the light trails transparent and whenever a bike collided with a trail it exploded like molten glass. That was really neat.

I do also think that the new light cycle scene(s) were done pretty darn good. That said, the original is still better? Why? It’s not because I’m an old curmudgeon, it goes back to that clarity thing again.

A LOT of times during the light cycle duel(s) I found it difficult to figure out who was who because all the races HAD THE SAME DAMN COLOR BIKE. Only in close ups do we know who is who, and what the heck is going on.

The original Tron color coded the good guys bikes, so we at least knew who was who and could enjoy the 90 degree turns and extremely fast pace of the original’s light cycle duel. The original was more risky, precise and I dunno, kinetic, whereas the new Legacy duel is more flowing.

SOMEBODY TURN ON THE LIGHTS!

The world of Tron: Legacy is very dark and dreary.

It is never explained why if CLU 2 was trying to create a perfect system, was there only darkness, and clouds.

Well, we all know the reason why was because the producers were trying to copy the Matrix. In fact, if you had marketed Tron:Legacy as simply a “new Matrix movie,” and left out any features that would def. give away it was just a Tron movie, you’d be hard pressed to think otherwise.

Take a look at the original for a second. Although there is darkness throughout Tron, remember the MCP rules the joint, but even then there’s still vibrant colors, striking lines, and beautiful designs.

What Jo-Ko, Kosinski did was superimpose HIS architectural visions ONTO the Tron universe.
The result is neat, but visually BLAND when compared to the original.

Here’s the orientation session with the four twin female programs.
and…
The scene where Tron sends his identity disc to Alan Bradley.
Notice how the Legacy scene is noticeably bland and the original is, well, beautiful?

WHERE ARE ALL THE HEROES IN TRON LEGACY?

This is another big problem. When Sam finally finds Flynn, he realizes quickly that his dad has resigned himself to “Unibomber” levels of seCLUsion and detachment.

So, that only really leaves Quorra to help Sam. There are no other supporting characters that are good guys. Even the Ziggy Stardust “Zuus” turns out to be a traitorous a-hole.

There are no other cast to help out and get valiantly killed off trying to save our main heroes.

AND THEN THERE’S TRON

WHY IN THE FUCK WAS TRON RELEGATED TO THE BACK BURNER?

I can see the five d-bag writers getting together at Starbucks, talking over the plot, and then Adam Horotitz stands up and says, “Guys, I GOT IT! Let’s make Tron the BAD GUY!!! BUT, let’s half-ass hide the fact that Tron is now the bad buy, so that only the dumbest of audience members can’t figure it out!!”

They could have written AROUND using Boxleitner, to avoid the pain in the ass (and expensive) 3-D capture that they had to do with Clu and young Flynn.

Something could have been done. They could have given Tron a fucking cloak, or a hoodie, or a cool mask instead of a BIKER HELMET.

The could have made Tron himself into an ISO, or had Tron lead the ISO out of the system to safety, or sacrifice himself, or something.

THE COSTUMES SUCKED BALLS

One thing that pissed me off was the director’s choice to utterly discard ALL of the original (Oscar nominated) costume designs for the rubber/glowing “Batman” suits and biker helmets of Legacy.

They did have some promising concept art that was albeit a tad too “edgy,” at least kept a circuitry pattern

There was some bullshit talk that they couldn’t do the costumes the way that they were done in the past because of “x” issue because of lighting, whatever.
And I realize that there was no way EVER that they were going to approach backlighting the costumes the same way they did in the original Tron.

But, if you look at the original costumes, the way the backlighting was handled was genius.

There wasn’t a constant, bright glow all of the time. The three thousand Korean animators hired to do the backlighting of the lines in the costume did an amazing job of giving the circuitry in the suits DEPTH, and had to adjust the glow according to the angle the person was at. Remember, this was all HAND DONE. This was not some bullshit chromakey job.

For a good frame of reference, the original Tron was shot IN BLACK AND WHITE. EVERYTHING YOU SEE IN THE ORIGINAL HAD TO BE PUT IN BY HAND.
The only time they used computers was for the light cycle races, the solar sailer, Sark’s carrier and the MCP.

ED DILLINGER JR.

So that they can have a villain in Tron 3, if there ever is another one, the writers decided to stick in Ed Dillinger’s son on the ENCOM board of directors. If you remember, Ed Sr. was the guy who stole Flynn’s programs (games) and presented them as his own and then began his meteoric rise to Senior Exec. VP of Encom.

He then created the MCP, which then went apeshit super smartz, and tried to take over the world.

WHY IN THE FUCK would ANYONE AT ENCOM hire ED Jr.?

Furthermore, why couldn’t they just use Dillinger Sr. in the next movie. Sure, he might not have had the creative side to create games like Flynn, but he was somehow able to put together the MCP, which was very close to just taking over the whole world. Heck, Dillinger could just make a cameo, as that’s all that’s needed, as obviously the villain would be the MCP again.

FAT COP
So, it just so happens that you’re the largest software manufacturer in the entire world, let me ask you, would you entrust the security of a 50+ story skyscraper AND the vitally important server farms/supercomputers to one fat guard?

Apparently ENCOM has no problem with that.

Lastly, there is no way in hell that the fat rent a cop would have got up onto, let alone proceeded down the sign hanging in mid air over certain death to try and catch some punk kid.

MATRIX REDUX

Another problem with TRON: LEGACY, was that it not only ripped of Star Wars, it also pretty much directly ripped off “The Matrix.” The Castor/Zuse and Gem characters in Legacy were virtually (ha) identical to the Merovingian and Persephone characters.

Also, Castor/Zuse was more “Captain Helix,” and less “Ziggy Stardust.”

NO SMILES ALLOWED
Everyone in Legacy looks like this:
The original Tron at least has some smiles. 🙂
What’s so f’ing wrong with smiles anymore?!

If you didn’t notice, hardly anyone smiled in the new Tron. Everyone was depressed. Heck, they even smiled more in “The Matrix” movies.
Why did the movie have to be SO dark and depressing?

Yeah, obviously I was around when the original Tron came out. It was the absolute BEST TIME EVER to grow up as a kid. I remember when the Tron arcade game came out a few months prior to the release of the movie and how fing awesome the Tron arcade game was at the time.

I remember even filling out a Tron sweepstakes card to try and win a trip to the premiere of Tron.

I even remember playing the ultra rare cocktail version of Tron with its little, nubby flight stick. 🙂

I even had the TomyTronics Tron hand held game, which was the best hand held game ever made.

Anyway, you get the point. Things were really cool back then. They were fun and happy.

Each arcade game was its own individual self contained WORLD that players escaped to for a few quarters at a time. It was a joyful time.

This brings me back to my point. Back when Tron was made, it was a different time, almost thirty years ago. I understand that. Times change and movies change.

Tron was a PERFECT representation of what it was to be alive in 1982.

This is the primary reason why “Blade Runner” did poorly at the box office and E.T. did a billion dollars in business. Although a great and beautiful movie, “Blade Runner” did not reflect the attitudes of the people of 1982. If “Blade Runner” had come out in 1979, only a few years earlier, it would have been a hit. E.T. was more in line with the Zeitgeist: the spirit of that time, as was Tron.

Tron was a lighthearted movie, and it had a happy ending.

Tron: Legacy was depressing and had SHITTY and downright RETARDED ending.

Instead of trying to concentrate on what made the original Tron great…

…and then build on that, the creators of Tron: Legacy were so the antithesis of the the original creators, that they could only take the Tron world and SUPERIMPOSE OTHER MOVIES ONTO IT.

Everything I’ve read, or seen with interviews with the director and writers, and even the sound designers, ALL said the same thing, “Yeah, we’re big fans of the original Tron, but really, fuck the original Tron, we’re doing our own thing with Legacy and we’ve put little “easter eggs” in the movie as a nod to the fans of the original.” (paraphrasing.)